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Mark Brennan, Professor of Leadership and Community Development and UNESCO Chair in Rural Community, Leadership, and Youth Development, and Paige Castellanos, Ph.D. graduate student in Rural Sociology, are among this year’s winners of the W. LaMarr Kopp Award.

Despite their typically small size and sparse distribution, farms that sell their products locally may boost economic growth in their communities in some regions of the U.S., according to a team of economists.

Kristal Jones, Rural Sociology and INTAD Ph.D. candidate, is a recipient of the Alumni Association Dissertation Award, Social Sciences category, for 2014-15. She will be recognized with other 2014-2015 recipients of the Alumni Association Dissertation Award at the Graduate School Alumni Society's Spring Social and Recognition Dinner. The Alumni Association Dissertation Award provides funding and recognition to outstanding full-time doctoral students who have passed their comprehensive exams and have received approval of the dissertation topic. This award is considered to be among the most prestigious available to Penn State graduate students and recognizes outstanding achievement in scholarship and professional accomplishment. Congratulations, Kristal!

A research team led by Stephan Goetz, Professor of Agricultural and Regional Economics and Director of Northeast Regional Center for Rural Development (NERCRD), has launched a quarterly newsletter that will provide updates on the research and outreach activities of the $5 million, U.S. Department of Agriculture-funded project called Enhancing Food Security in the Northeast through Regional Food Systems. The project seeks to determine whether greater reliance on regionally produced food could improve food access and affordability in disadvantaged communities, while also benefiting farmers, food supply chain firms and others in the food system.

Charles W. Coale, Jr., Professor Emeritus of Ag and Applied Economics and former Extension Agricultural Economist at Virginia Tech, received the 2013 Distinguished Service Award from the Virginia Farm Bureau. He was honored at the annual Virginia Farm Bureau banquet held in December. Charlie is a Penn State alum, earning his Ph.D. degree in Agricultural Economics in 1969. He and his family plan to participate in the M.E. John Lecture this spring.

On-farm internships and land-link programs are two important models for increasing the number of farmers in the sustainable-agriculture movement, according to researchers in Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences.

Last year the federal government banned U.S. Department of Agriculture inspectors from entering Mexico at five Texas border crossings to inspect U.S.-bound cattle.
That decision has had a huge economic impact on small border towns in Texas, in particular the city of Presidio. It sits across from Ojinaga, Chihuahua, Mexico. The international port of entry here had been the largest for cattle imports from Mexico into the United States for eight decades.

The leaders of the House and Senate agriculture committees are meeting Wednesday as they continue to try to work out the differences between their respective farm bills. If they fail, the country faces what's being called the "dairy cliff" — with milk prices potentially shooting up to about $7 a gallon sometime after the first of the year.

In all but the shortest supply chains, food travels through wholesale distribution centers on its way from farm to consumer, and the location of these distributors can have a big impact on the efficiency of a food system. Now, a new mathematical model can help business owners and policy makers determine the optimal locations for such distributors, thanks to a research team led by an engineer in Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences.

From 2001 to 2011, the Pennsylvania workforce underwent a marked shift from higher-paying to lower-paying jobs, a trend that could have serious implications for the state's economy, according to a new report, "Middle Income Job Decline in Pennsylvania, 2001-11", authored by Ted Alter, professor of agricultural, environmental and regional economics, and Ted Fuller, development economist in the college's Center for Economic and Community Development.

Timothy Kelsey, professor of agricultural economics, was part of a story, aired Monday, October 28, on national NPR broadcast of Morning Edition, titled "How Fracking's Ups and downs Affect Pennsylvania's Economy."

Small farms and businesses may be the unintended victims of legislation aimed at cutting the federal budget by eliminating certain sets of local and county-based economic data, according to a group of economists.

Rural Sociology PhD candidate Jennifer Hayden has received a 2013 Graduate Student Research Award from the USDA-Northeast Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program for her dissertation research project "Soil Health and Soil Management Decision-making in the Mid-Atlantic." Carolyn Sachs, professor of rural sociology and head of Women's Studies Department, is her adviser. Congratulations, Jenn!

As we approach the one year anniversary of the birth of AESE – the Department of Agricultural Economics, Sociology, and Education out of the old AEE and AERS – we can look back with great pride in how far we have come and great anticipation of what lies ahead.

Two faculty members and two rural sociology graduate students from the AESE department were presented with awards at the Rural Sociological Society (RSS) 2013 Awards Ceremony, held August 8, in New York City.

Mark Brennan, UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) Chair and Penn State professor, delivers the keynote lecture, “Achieving Education for All, Realizing Engaged Communities, and Creating Global Citizens for Change through the UNESCO Chairs Program” at the two-day symposium, "Shaping the Future of International Development," held July 15-16 on Penn State's University Park campus

Jillian Gordon and Meagan Slates have been chosen as Teach Ag Ambassadors by the National Association of Agricultural Educators to represent the profession of agricultural education and encourage others to consider careers in the field.